Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is so daring, it is so ambitious, it is so thrilling and weird and pointed and powerful. I never knew where it was going.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a low budget attempt at getting under the skin of people who deposit themselves into difficult territory and attempt to maintain their equilibrium. The actors are strong and the story is familiar, but there is a sorrowful angst in between the gunshots. You can tell the filmmakers care far more about the situation than they do the action -- and once you accept it, it's okay. I watched it a couple times to make sure I hadn't looked away and missed something, and the second time through I understood what they were after: the pointlessness of war. This is a movie in which a character is forced to shout "Shoot him, dammit!" A rip from Bridge on the River Kwai, a wild comparison, yes, but another war picture that wanted only to say how pointless the war itself is.

I thought this movie seemed like a case study in how not to make a movie for the most part. Since I am a filmmaker, I give it a 2 for consistency.The problems remain from beginning to end with the plot being extremely predictable using bits and pieces of most, if not all, previous successful war stories. The computer generated graphics were too much like viewing a video game at points and there seemed to be no attempt by the director to add some realistic quality to the story. I was interested in the budget to get an idea of what he had to work with, but did not find that information.It seemed like this project pushed the limits of a low budget movie too far resulting in a production that drags the viewer along with the story without their imagination being engaged. The actors weren't bad, but the plot needs more innovation.

Rape with a pistol. Glass slicing open a jugular vein. Exploding death by missile from 60 feet away. Obnoxious reporter. Tortured hero. Vile bad guy. Ambivalent two-toned guy who dies at the end of act one. Fire fire fire. An American military officer with a dark sense of humor (Fred Dryer) -- "The guy was five foot four in reality. Tough ba****d," Fred says at one point. Imagine this from a guy a six seven. He sold the admiration though. Where was I... Faces from a John Ford movie in the Red Cross camp. A kid so dirty the lice jump off the screen. An amazingly good performance from the son of the two-toned leader. A little cheese around the edges. Not enough extras. Not enough wide shots. But plenty of blood flying. Bizarre choppers. Cool locations. ******

Afghanistan is thousands of miles from anything in our world and yet becauseof 9/11 has acheived a central status that this movie trains its sight on. The two Americans would seem to be there for entirely different reasons andyet there is a chilling sense that both are there to escape personal tragedy or the sense that being alive when others are dying is patently unfair. The movie's two lead actors are up to the task of making us pay atention and there is anaching sense that only in this ridiculously violent world could they possibly find each other and in the end save each other. Although there is no real explanation for why Afghanistan has to suffer so much death and destruction, this movie at least gives us the sense that there are real people there who deserve a chance for something better. Although there isplenty of violence and action, it always seemd justified. Worth a viewing.